The buzzer sounded and the gold medal match in Tokyo between the U.S.’s Tamyra Mensah-Stock and Nigeria’s Blessing Oborududu was over.
But there was no immediate celebration or screams of excitement.
Instead, Tamyra walked around the mat and acknowledged those around it with a simple bow and a hand gesture symbolizing love.
But when she reached the platform steps, the reality of her accomplishment engulfed her like a Tsunami.
Tamyra Mensah Stock was the Women’s 68kg Freestyle Olympic champion.
Her victory made her the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport and the fourth African American overall to win Olympic gold (Gable Steveson won it a little while later in Tokyo, making him the fifth African American Olympic wrestling gold medalist).
We all cheered as she embraced her coach in a bear hug, expelling the emotions welling up inside.
It was a moment few will ever experience.
In our interview, I asked her about it and wanted to know what was the first thing that went through her mind when the match ended.
Was it that she was a gold medalist? Was it that she finally won?
No, it was something so simple that it was funny.
“Thank God it’s over. She hit me so hard!”
We both laughed.
Her response encapsulates the type of person Tamyra Mensah-Stock is and why she’s so endearing to those who know her.
She’s funny, open, and friendly. When you speak with her, it feels so natural that you feel like you had been friends for years.
But once she steps onto the mat, the smiling Tamyra exits and wrestling Tamyra enters.
The Move to the Mat
Tamyra’s introduction to wrestling was not an instant love connection.
She was a track and field athlete from middle school through her freshman year in high school so wrestling wasn’t part of her sports routine.
Her twin sister, Tarkyia, was not into sports but their mother demanded that she take up an activity.
She chose wrestling, which her mother initially shot down. But she eventually relented and Tarkyia enthusiastically hit the mat.
That decision altered Tamyra’s life.
Twins usually move together so it was natural to assume that Tamyra would follow Tarkyia into wrestling. While that held true, the former did not share the latter’s passion for the sport.
Actually, she hated it.
“I wanted to quit during my first month. I hated it,” Tamyra told me.
Tarkyia convinced her to stay with it through their first dual meet and Tamyra reluctantly agreed.
It proved to be one of the best decisions she made in her young life.
In Texas, girl’s wrestling was not a club activity or a start-up sport. It was established and extremely competitive. So Tamyra the track athlete entered into a sport featuring experienced athletes. To the competition, she probably resembled chum in shark-infested waters.
So despite having no real knowledge of what she was doing, and being bumped two weight classes by her coaches, Tamyra walked onto the mat to face her opponent, who happened to be a state qualifier.
And Tamyra subsequently pinned her.
“I went out there, not knowing what I was doing and ended up pinning the state qualifier,” she said. “I didn’t even know what state qualifier meant!”
There, Tamyra the track athlete was reborn as Tamyra the wrestler.
Her Foundation
Tarkyia played the role of athletic matchmaker for Tamyra, but wrestler Jacob Stock, a classmate and member of their high school wrestling team, also played a then unknowing role in her decision to stick with wrestling.
Her attraction to him piqued her interest in wrestling, something she giddily admitted in our conversation.
The two were a couple in high school and college, where they both wrestled at Wayland Baptist University in Texas. There Tamyra was a 2x WCWA national champion.
In 2016, they were married.
Now Tamyra Mensah-Stock added another block to a strong foundation supported by her family and wrestling.
But perhaps the strongest building block in that foundation is her faith.
She’s a devout and unabashedly proud Christian who incorporates her faith into every aspect of her life. It’s what she turns to when things get hard or complicated.
Faith helped her after her father died while she was in high school and it was what she relied on in her Olympic prep and during the Olympics in Tokyo.
Being a professional athlete is a full-time job. When a championship rolls around, athletes must isolate themselves from distraction and elevate themselves beyond points they’re normally accustomed to.
Representing your country at the Olympics is an additional burden that carries immense weight, one that demands you excel past your limits.
That’s what Tamyra’s coach demanded, so she turned to her faith to push her through the grueling practices and ultimately to Olympic gold.
“He put me through hell in practice and I cried,” said Tamyra. “There were moments like that that were incredibly hard and I didn’t think I was enough. But once I got to the mat, I was like ‘let go, let God.'”
That’s her rallying mantra, the phrase that gives her the strength to push beyond her physical exhaustion.
Her faith incites her belief in self, which in turn propels her to excellence on the mat and in her everyday life.
“My faith has driven me,” she said proudly. “Don’t be afraid to show who you are. I am a child of Christ. That’s who I am.”
And who she is is inspiring others to excel in both life and on the mat.
Her rise to gold medal glory is a journey that inspires a younger generation, particularly young girls. When we discussed it, her face lit up just like it did in her post-match interview in Tokyo.
There, in one of the most celebrated interviews from the Games, Tamyra went from bawling Olympian to motivational speaker, letting young girls know they can be great.
“Just because you’re a female doesn’t mean that you can’t accomplish the biggest of goals, and being Olympic champ is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my entire life.”
Tamyra the Inspiration
Tamyra Mensah-Stock is an inspiration.
She inspires young girls and she inspires the wrestling community, a family that embraced her even when she was initially unsure about participating in the sport.
“After that day [her win at the duals] I instantly loved it. And what kept me coming back was the family culture that wrestling had.”
More than a decade later, Tamyra cemented her place in the history of the sport she once wanted to quit.
Not only is she the second U.S. woman to win Olympic gold (Helen Maroulis was the first to do it at the 2016 Rio Games), she’s the first African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal.
She also completed the journey started by Toccara Montgomery, who was the first Black wrestler on the U.S. Olympic team when women’s wrestling made its debut in Athens in 2004.
Next up for Tamyra Mensah Stock are the World Championships in Oslo, Germany in early October. There she plans to add another World Championship title to the one she won in 2019.
With the strength and support of her family, faith and the loving wrestling community, I would expect that to become a reality.
